Yesterday was a long day. I woke up at 3 am Vegas time in the middle of Illinois, drove three hours to O’Hare, flew to Houston, chilled in the airport for four hours, and then flew to Vegas arriving at 8 pm, 15 hours after I woke up. Of course, the day was hardly over at that point.

During the layover in Houston, I took a seat at the Fox Sky Box next to a couple of normal-enough looking guys. We got to talking and the two of them told me they were on their way to Calgary (connecting in Houston from Boston, wtf, right?) for the ‘Sinister 7‘, a 91 mile ultra-marathon that takes place in the Canadian Rockies. The sickest part of all? There’s no trail! Participants are given 27 hours to complete the race or they are pulled off the course. There are seven different checkpoints that must be reached within a certain amount of time in order to be permitted to continue.

Only one of the two gentleman, his name Kevin Claire, is participating in the race. The other was his coach/confidant who would be there to meet him at each check point and provide much needed support. Kevin said he’s ran five ultra-marathons in the past 12 months to prepare for this race. At 41, he doesn’t look like how you would picture an all-terrain ultra-marathon runner. You can certainly tell he’s a fit guy, but as he sat there with a goatee and rugged clothing, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to you to think he’s anything different than a blue collar type of guy just sipping on a beer.

Sinister 7 participants go between heights of 4,500′ to 9,000′ above sea level. When asked if he has any experience in that high of altitudes, Kevin just smiled and said, “nope.” I couldn’t figure out what could possibly possess him to do this. He said, simply enough, that he just likes testing the limits of human achievement. Pretty awesome stuff.

When they asked me what I was going to Vegas for, I think each of them were equally floored that I would put up, “TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?” to play in a poker tournament. Kinda funny how that works. Anyway, best of luck to Kevin whom I believe is the only American competing in the race.

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Last night, I registered for Day 1D (Monday) of the Main Event and met up with a few people for a drink at the Rio, including PokerTips bloggers Dave and Seb. The iBar has these tables that are pretty conducive to prop betting. One application is a satellite map of Earth that you can move and zoom with your hands. We had some interesting props like, “can you zoom in on the Golden Gate Bridge in under two minutes?” While that might sound fairly easy, it’s pretty humbling how big the Earth is and how small all of these famous landmarks are once you finally find them and zoom in on them. If you ever want to hustle someone at this game, challenge them to find the White House in under two minutes. Free money.

Momentarily, Dave is picking me up and we’re heading to Lotus of Siam for the lunch buffet. I mentioned this restaurant in a previous entry, but it’s basically regarded by many as the best Thai restaurant in Vegas, if not the U.S., if not the world. I’m hardly qualified to be able to agree with that assessment, but I do know that it’s really damn good.

After lunch, we’re picking up Leif Force and heading to Angel Park’s Cloud Nine course for some golf in the 105 degree heat. I’m seeing Zumanity with a friend (female, obv) tonight. In the only other attempt I’ve made to see a Cirque show, the stage hydraulics defaulted within 15 minutes forcing the show to be canceled.

Anyway, it’s good to be back and it’s good to have left. I saw a lot of zombie-faced poker players at the Rio last night, some of whom confirmed my suspicion that they were ready to get the hell out of this city. That’s hardly the ideal mentality one could take into the biggest poker tournament of the year.